65 Best Illustrator tutorials from 2018

December 10th, 2018

This week’s roundup emphasis is focused all around the latest and best illustrator tutorials, which where all created in 2018. There’s a broad range of illustrator tutorials featured in the post. This a is a great resource to strengthen your design skills, whether you want to get better at text effects or creating illustration. There’s a tutorials suited for every skill range, if you’re a beginner or a long time user of illustrator.

Tutorials are the best way to learn for free. I hope you enjoy the tutorials featured in the roundup.

Cursive type, whether a script font or hand-lettered, often features elegant swashes and overlapping strokes. One way artists emphasise the curvature of their type is to apply shading, which adds an illusion of depth to the lettering piece. In today’s tutorial I’ll show you how to produce a shaded type effect in Adobe Illustrator.

Sugar skulls are traditional decorative skulls created for the celebration of Día de Muertos—the Mexican Day of the Dead holiday. It’s believed that on November 1 and 2 the souls of the deceased come down to reunite with their loved ones. To celebrate, families create special altars for remembrance of the lost members and decorate them with flowers, candles, food, and little ornamented skulls made of sugar or clay—one skull for each loved one.

you’ll use some simple shapes and tools that you would normally use on a daily basis to achieve the final result. By the end of the tutorial, you will have the skills to draw other animal donuts in future projects.

In this tutorial you’ll learn how to create dimensional text inspired by vintage packaging designs and logotypes. Pour a cup of coffee, sit back, and let’s create some text with the help of Illustrator effects, the Blend Tool, and textures fit for the branding of a coffee house.

Adobe Illustrator is the perfect tool to create such an effect; the 3D Extrude & Bevel tool easily generates an accurate isometric layout, then the artwork can then be broken down into individual vector shapes for easy customisation with colourful fills and detailed patterns.

In this tutorial, you will learn how to create a wafer-inspired text effect with the help of the 3D options and the Transform effect to obtain the wafer layers in Adobe Illustrator. You will also create the wafer pattern from scratch using a custom pattern brush, and you’ll finish with the shiny melted chocolate running down on the letters. Sounds delicious!

Turn on the light with this icon and illustrative light bulb vector. In the tutorial below you’ll create the light bulb vector from simple shapes, manipulate gradients, gradient meshes, and blending modes all in pursuit of a semi-realistic light bulb vector design.

Adode Illustrator tutorial I’ll take you through my process of creating such artwork to produce a similar 70s inspired type style, then follow it up with an alternative process that has the advantage of preserving the live text.

If you love Oreo cookies and vector drawing then this tutorial is for you. You will learn how to draw an Oreo-inspired icon with the help of the 3D effect and Mapping option, plus you’ll use a lot of brushes and effects for texture and a more detailed look. Let’s make this icon as delicious as possible!

Follow this tutorial and learn how to create a set of traffic lights in Adobe Illustrator. At the beginning you will create the body of the traffic light using the Rectangle tool, Transform panel and some basic effects. Then you will create the turned off and on lights using the Ellipse tool, Offset path and bunch of gradients. This tutorial is a great example of what you can do with the Align panel in Illustrator.

We will create this spider in vector form using basic shapes and a few simple manipulation techniques along with a custom blend brush that will help us to add details. At the end, we’ll give this character a cute face and complete the illustration.

We will create this spider in vector form using basic shapes and a few simple manipulation techniques along with a custom blend brush that will help us to add details. At the end, we’ll give this character a cute face and complete the illustration.

We’ll talk about all the methods of deformation of objects used in Illustrator with the help of the Envelope Distort feature. Hopefully, this tutorial will broaden your options and will save you plenty of time in the future.

It’s always fun making character illustrations, but even more so when that character is based on an actual person! Cartoon style avatars are commonly used for their balance between resembling the person they’re representing, whilst retaining some anonymity. In today’s tutorial we’ll use the vector tools in Adobe Illustrator to produce a simple avatar character with a line art style and flat colours. We’ll build the character in such a way that it’s somewhat modular, where multiple personas can be built from one basic foundation.

In the following Adobe Illustrator tutorial you will learn how to create a Shopping Paper Bag. We’ll use basic tools, a bunch of gradients, Blending Modes, Clipping Mask and some basic effects. This is a great tutorial for beginners.

In the following Adobe Illustrator tutorial you will learn how to create a Shopping Paper Bag. We’ll use basic tools, a bunch of gradients, Blending Modes, Clipping Mask and some basic effects. This is a great tutorial for beginners.

There are so many things that people celebrate when feeling happy about their achievements. In this tutorial we’ll be drawing a cheerful character celebrating a victory in a sports event. We’ll be using various functions of Adobe Illustrator and modifying geometric shapes in order to make the process easy and fun. Join the marathon, and let’s run through this tutorial together!

In this tutorial you’ll be creating a simple mailbox icon in flat style, that can be used for your newsletter or website design. We’ll be modifying basic geometric shapes and using various handy functions of Adobe Illustrator.

In this tutorial you’ll be creating a simple mailbox icon in flat style, that can be used for your newsletter or website design. We’ll be modifying basic geometric shapes and using various handy functions of Adobe Illustrator.

In this tutorial, you’ll go through a fun and easy process of working with simple shapes and warp effects to create this fancy fox logotype! We’ll be modifying and transforming objects, using various tools and functions of Adobe Illustrator, so you don’t need to draw anything by hand or use a graphic tablet.

When you’ve not created a new vector in a while, Adobe Illustrator can seem very scary. And if you’ve been creating vectors as long as I have, you don’t want your first vector in over a year to be a “run of the mill” one or predictable. You want to set yourself a challenge, whilst still in your comfort zone.

In the following steps, you will learn how to create a simple stopwatch illustration in Adobe Illustrator. For starters, you will learn how to prepare your document and how to set up a simple grid. Next using basic tools and effects along with the Appearance panel and the Pathfinder panel, you will learn how to create the main shapes of the stopwatch.

In this tutorial we’ll be designing stylized flat characters, depicting a happy couple getting married. We’ll be modifying a lot of basic geometric shapes, applying various warp effects and using handy tools and functions of Adobe Illustrator to make the characters look fancy and lively.

In this tutorial you’ll learn how to take a “plain Jane” font and transform it into folded ribbons to create a stunning ribbon font text effect, perfect for your upscale designs. Combining use of the Shape Builder Tool and Appearance panel, you’ll have this project tied up in no time.

In this tutorial you’ll learn how to take a “plain Jane” font and transform it into folded ribbons to create a stunning ribbon font text effect, perfect for your upscale designs. Combining use of the Shape Builder Tool and Appearance panel, you’ll have this project tied up in no time.